Images (1972)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Robert Altman

Writers:

Robert Altman (written by)
Susannah York (book)

Release Date:

18 December 1972 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror

Tagline:

A motion picture of the extra senses.

Plot:

Schizophrenic housewife, engulfed by terrorizing apparitions, kills off each, unknowing if these demons are merely figments of her hallucinatory imagination or part of reality.

Plot Keywords:

Fall From Height | Schizophrenia | Kitchen | Jigsaw Puzzle | Waterfall

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win & 4 nominations

Cast

Susannah York	...	Cathryn
Rene Auberjonois	...	Hugh
Marcel Bozzuffi	...	Rene
Hugh Millais	...	Marcel
Cathryn Harrison	...	Susannah
John Morley	...	Old Man
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Barbara Baxley	...	Voice on telephone (uncredited)

Directed by
Robert Altman

Writing credits
Robert Altman		(written by)
Susannah York		(book "In Search of Unicorns")

Produced by
Tommy Thompson	....	producer

Original Music by
John Williams

Cinematography by
Vilmos Zsigmond

Film Editing by
Graeme Clifford

Production Design by
Leon Ericksen

Makeup Department
Toni Delaney	....	makeup artist
Barry Richardson	....	hair stylist

Production Management
Sheila Collins	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Seamus Byrne	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Rodney Holland	....	sound editor
Noel Quinn	....	boom operator
Liam Saurin	....	sound recordist
Doug E. Turner	....	dubbing mixer (as Doug Turner)
Stomu Yamashta	....	(sounds ) (as Stomu Yamash'ta)

Special Effects by
Jerry F. Johnson	....	special effects (as Jerry Johnson)

Camera and Electrical Department
Earl L. Clark	....	assistant camera (as Earl Clark)
Jack Conroy	....	gaffer
Paddy Keogh	....	grip
Nico Vermuelen	....	assistant camera

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Jack Gallagher	....	wardrobe

Editorial Department
Robin Buick	....	assistant editor
Michael Kelliher	....	assistant editor
David Spiers	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Stomu Yamashta	....	musician: sound sculptures
John Williams	....	orchestrator (uncredited)

Transportation Department
Arthur Dunne	....	transportation captain

Other crew
Joan Bennett	....	continuity
John Collingwood	....	production accountant
Jean D'Oncieu	....	assistant to producer
Raymond Ray	....	clothes: Miss York

Production Companies

• Columbia Pictures Corporation
• Hemdale Film
• Lions Gate Films

Distributors

• Columbia Pictures (1972) (USA) (theatrical)
• Hemdale Film Distribution (1972) (UK) (theatrical)
• Suomen elokuva-arkisto (1980) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Lorimar Home Vídeo (????) (Brazil) (VHS)
• MGM Home Entertainment (2003) (USA) (DVD) (widescreen)
• MGM Home Entertainment (2003) (USA) (VHS) (widescreen)

Other Companies

• Ardmore Sound  studio
• De Lane Lea Sound Centre  re-recorded

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

UK | Ireland | USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Finland:K-16 (1980) | Australia:M | Sweden:15 | UK:X | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Ardmore Studios - Herbert Road, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Every character name is the real first name of another actor in this movie.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Lost Highway (1997)

Altman's lost dream sonata

I have spent a grown lifetime seeking this 1972 Altman dreamscape, and lost all hope when a friend reported that the director told a Q-and-A audience that Columbia had mistakenly destroyed the negative. A specialty store in Santa Monica somehow found a video copy, and it was worth fifteen years' wait.

Suggestive of the tinkling, misted-over fugue states of QUINTET and THREE WOMEN, IMAGES riffs lyrically off Polanski's REPULSION. Where Polanski's film is pitched somewhere between sixties horror and the dry joke-telling of Bunuel, Altman's version is lush, druglike, sensuously baroque. Susannah York plays a children's writer in a remote Irish cottage who seems to be spending too much time indoors. (Were the movie not lost in obscurity, you might think her an antecedent for Jack Torrance and Barton Fink.) As she copes with the would-be-regular-guy puttering of her schmucky husband (Rene Auberjonois, in a role rightly intended for Michael Murphy), two other loathsome men flit into her life--the husband's buddy, an Irish lecher played by Hugh Millais, and a seemingly dead ex-lover, played by Marcel Bozzufi. As these men appear to bleed into one another in York's mind, so do they soon start bleeding into the cottage's Persian rugs.

IMAGES defines Altman as the freest and most fearless of all American moviemakers. Most critics only stand behind Altman's we-are-the-people movies--his community mosaics. But he clearly is as passionate about mapping inner worlds as outer ones, and these Expressionist chamber pieces are his most feckless works. The movie is also a reminder of what Altman lost when he stopped hiring Vilmos Zsigmond to shoot his movies. Almost no one on the planet has such an intuitively graceful and expressive shooting style, but Zsigmond's stunning work here--among his finest--reveals that it's a long walk downstairs from Zsigmond to the likes of Jean Lapine. And note should be made of the work of the youngish composer who wrote the elegant, sinewy, restrained score--a decidedly non-bombastic, anti-symphonic fellow whom we now know as John Williams.